My good friend, Adjoa, a first-time mom in Ghana, appeared ahead to welcoming her new child. On the supply day, she was away from her major care heart and rushed to a different hospital for supply, unaware that vital details about her dangerously positioned placenta wasn’t transferred together with her. Adjoa misplaced her child and practically her life, a devastating consequence of fragmented healthcare data. I’ve realized that her tragic story is not remoted – it underscores a widespread, pressing disaster throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
One method to sort out this disaster is to institute Digital Well being Information (EHR), which must be an integral a part of any environment friendly health-care data system. But, throughout Africa, well being data stay fragmented – locked in paper information or remoted digital platforms. Certainly, fragmented healthcare data routinely result in preventable medical errors, redundant assessments, delayed diagnoses, and suboptimal affected person care.
Ghana’s well being digitization panorama exemplifies this problem, ruled by two complementary but distinct insurance policies – the Ministry of Well being’s (MoH) Nationwide E-Well being Technique, setting out the broad strategic imaginative and prescient, and the Ghana Well being Service’s (GHS) Coverage and Technique on Digital Well being (2023–2027), aimed toward operational implementation. Whereas separate paperwork align logically with every establishment’s distinct roles – MoH offering oversight and strategic route, and GHS dealing with implementation and operational administration – the truth seems extra complicated. The absence of clear harmonization between these insurance policies creates confusion amongst stakeholders, dilutes accountability, and ends in piecemeal progress.
Important gaps persist each in Ghana and throughout Africa. Main healthcare services, which generate foundational medical data vital for affected person care continuity, are steadily ignored in digital initiatives. Important information stay trapped in paper techniques, disconnected from tertiary establishments, thereby compromising affected person security and healthcare high quality. Even the place digital techniques exist, these are equally siloed, not speaking to one another. Moreover, insufficient infrastructure, unreliable connectivity, restricted healthcare personnel educated in digital techniques, and reliance on donor funding exacerbate these points, disproportionately affecting rural and resource-constrained communities all through the continent.
That is why my organisation’ platform at MedTrack integrates with Ghana’s nationwide biometric ID system, guaranteeing that affected person data are accessible throughout completely different healthcare services. By linking well being information to a singular nationwide identifier, we deal with the fragmentation that hinders healthcare supply. With over 20,000 registered customers and greater than 300,000 well being data processed and linked to the nationwide biometric ID, we’re steadily constructing a scalable answer for continuity of care.
Crucially, our method prioritizes last-mile integration by partnering with District Well being Directorate Heads. Via our collaboration with the Gomoa East District Well being Directorate, we’ve got secured entry to 31 major well being services to pilot our flagship MedTrack EHR system. The outcomes communicate for themselves: in services the place MedTrack has been deployed, affected person wait instances have been reduce in half. At MedTrack-enabled services, sufferers keep away from duplicate procedures because of accessible data, and over 70% of these utilizing the Affected person App can share their well being information for continuity of care – even at non-MedTrack services. Such localized successes function sturdy proof that digital transformation in well being can ship swift and measurable enhancements.
Nevertheless, scaling these successes requires greater than remoted interventions. It calls for coherent coverage implementation backed by sustained investments and collaboration.
International locations like Rwanda and Kenya have demonstrated that with focused infrastructure investments, sturdy coaching applications, and well-defined regulatory frameworks, digital well being adoption can succeed. Ghana can comply with swimsuit by adopting standardized interoperability frameworks, worldwide cybersecurity protocols, and capacity-building initiatives tailor-made to its distinctive healthcare panorama.
Present Ghanaian insurance policies accurately define visions however fall quick in execution, usually missing clear accountability and integration. Furthermore, the latest 2025 finances displays worrying omissions: whereas practically US$1.5 billion is dedicated to bodily infrastructure and healthcare applications, express funding for digital well being infrastructure—important for interoperability and common well being entry—is conspicuously absent. This should change. The unpredictable nature of donor funding, as seen lately with USAID finances cuts, additional reveal the urgency for self-reliance in financing important digital infrastructure. African governments should acknowledge that digital well being infrastructure is now not non-compulsory however foundational to attaining efficient common healthcare protection.
As Ghana’s 2025 Funds Assertion overlooks devoted digital well being funding, and with the U.S. slashing USAID applications by 83%, disrupting well being companies throughout Africa, the urgency for self-reliant well being infrastructure turns into evident. Concurrently, the European Union’s implementation of the European Well being Information House (EHDS) on March 26, 2025, gives a powerful mannequin for Africa to develop its personal interoperable digital well being techniques.
Additional, the latest political transition in Ghana gives a strategic second to pivot decisively in the direction of a completely built-in digital well being system. Harmonizing insurance policies throughout well being authorities, investing intentionally in infrastructure, and establishing clear accountability can remodel healthcare supply nationwide. By seizing this chance, Ghana might present a replicable mannequin for the remainder of Africa, demonstrating how built-in digital data can improve affected person security, enhance healthcare effectivity, and finally save lives.
The know-how and experience wanted to finish the fragmented well being data disaster exist already. What stays is decisive, strategic motion from governments, healthcare leaders, and personal sector stakeholders. Tragedies like Adjoa’s should now not stay in silence; as a substitute, allow them to encourage pressing, significant change. As we observe World Immunization Week, let this be our second to maneuver past insurance policies to measurable outcomes – guaranteeing no affected person’s care is compromised by fragmented data once more.
Victoria Mabel Sackey is Co-founder/COO of MedTrack, Ghana, the place she tackles fragmented well being data by way of a complete database system enabling safe entry to affected person data when wanted for optimum care continuity.
